Rex Murphy: What Donald Trump would like in a man like Conrad Black

Former newspaper publisher Conrad Black at his Toronto home a day after being pardoned by U.S. President Donald Trump, May 16, 2019. Peter J. Thompson/National Post

Conrad Black is a former editor and author of a British newspaper born in Canada. In 2007, he was convicted on four counts of fraud in the US District Court, in Chicago. While two of the criminal fraud charges were dropped on appeal, a conviction for fraud and obstruction of justice was confirmed in 2010 and he was again sentenced to 42 months in prison and a $ 125,000 fine. Later in 2018, he wrote a book about President Donald Trump. On May 15, 2019, Trump granted him a full pardon.

Notably, Black controlled Hollinger International, the third largest empire of English newspapers in the world, which published The Daily Telegraph (United Kingdom), Chicago Sun-Times (USA), The Jerusalem Post (Israel), National Post (Canada), most major newspapers in Australia and Canada and hundreds of community newspapers in North America, before a controversy arose over the sale of some of the company’s assets.

What Trump would like

There is no doubt that it was a real surprise to hear that President Donald Trump had issued a complete pardon to the principal Canadian historian/journalist, but his first line was very natural. In fact, perhaps even beyond the great differences of temperament and achievement between the two and the even greater space between their modes of personal direction and communication, there still exist some elements of common character.

And the fact is that the breach between the modes of communication of Conrad Black and those of the president invites analogies of the Grand Canyon scale or the submarine sublimity of the Marianas Trench to make him speak and write differently.

It should be noted that Trump’s relationship with formal or educated writing is on a plane between the tenuous web and perhaps absolute ignorance that such an expression exists. Despite the historical and impulsive howls you can have on Twitter, even though some of its advantages are, they will not be highly qualified in future English thesauri in its most elegant or elegant version.

It has been said that there is a combat gene in Black and perhaps that element, instead of its various newspapers, books, and defenses of the President, attracted the attention of the head of the White House, who learned that the fire in this age of comments instantaneous and infinite.

Source: Rex Murphy | National Post